


The Unlikely Recruit, Or How Susan Vasquez, Accomplished Pianist, Was Recruited to the DEO

by orphan_account



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Susan Vasquez: Accomplished Pianist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 02:57:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10527402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A flashback to Susan Vasquez's post-Berklee days, and how she ended up getting recruited to the DEO





	

Susan trudged slowly through Harvard Square.  It was after midnight, and the sounds of partying were still bouncing off the brick faces of the buildings.  She was hearing it as if through a thick, wool blanket; guys barking out deep, booming laughs, girls hollering high pitched invitations from second floor windows, the jukebox in the bar across the street that was inexplicably always blaring Eagle Eye Cherry whenever Susan happened to be walking by.  That wasn’t even music as far as she was concerned.

She was walking home from Maddie’s place for what would probably be the last time.  The saucy little redhead was tired of their dalliance.  She’d made up a bunch of reasons why, but it really boiled down to once again, a girl being disappointed that Susan wasn’t what she’d decided she was.  They always wanted her to be a macho stud because she wore her hair short and had a couple of piercings.  They wanted her to be an insatiable sexual dynamo because she was Latina.  They wanted her to be simple because she dressed down and drank unfussy beers.  They never bothered to look past their ideas of her and get to simply know who she actually was.

The tell usually came early on.  The way they reacted to her piano playing told her everything she needed to know.  She’d been a prodigy before she’d gotten into Berklee, drawn to the bold complexities of Gershwin, Debussy, and Shostakovich.  She executed with virtuosic fluidity, her fingers brushing over the keys in a way that belied the strength it took to play so quickly and with so much conviction.  Girls always found her talent a turn-on, but the question was this: was it checking a box on a form in their heads (“Plays a Musical Instrument”), or did they fully understand that what they were seeing and hearing was the result of years of work, a reflection of a soul with hidden depths that they would see if they only cared to look?

Maddie fell into the former category.  Susan knew it because the first time she played her something, Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, sweetly, sensitively, in the half-darkened dance rehearsal studio where she’d gone to tune the piano, the redhead had wrapped her arms around Susan’s waist, nibbled on her ear, and asked her if she knew how to play some pop song.  She was looking to act out some fantasy that had little or nothing to do with her.

It wasn’t a surprise that it ended like this.

Still, it was always a little disappointing.  

She wandered through the ivy-covered blocks till she found herself tromping through JFK Park, crossing the bike path, and standing at the edge of the Charles.  It was a quiet spot, not heavily trafficked at this particular time.  Not many cyclists coming through at this hour on a Saturday night.  She stared out at the sparkling lights of the city, listened to the sounds of the river moving, the waters high after a week of rain.  She was full of disappointment, regret.  She was a little drunk and sexually frustrated and kind of needed something to eat.  She had her last twenty bucks in the pocket of her black jeans.  She had definitely had better nights.

So when the river began to bubble furiously, and a strange light glowed through the froth, she didn’t turn and run.  She figured this, whatever it was, would be one more stop on the train of her woes this evening, and she wasn’t sure she cared.  When the surface of the river broke and a dark metal orb sporting a huge, glowing light on the front of it expelled itself from the river and hovered, dripping, in front of her, she simply sighed and whispered, “Okay.”

It hung in the air, humming, tilting from side to side as if inspecting her.  She backed slowly away from it, keeping her eyes fixed on it but glancing around occasionally, looking for a way to convince it to go and stare unnervingly at literally anyone else.  Her eyes took in the two rows of blinking blue lights that wrapped around its side, and she absorbed the sound of metallic skittering and clicking of moving parts that she couldn’t see.  “I can’t take you to my leader,” she half-called to it, steadying her nerves with her own bad joke.  “I don’t have that kind of access.”

But under her breath, she began muttering her sensei’s words, ones that he often imparted and reminded her of, ones that she strove to internalize every day:   _ A person who has no confidence will always hesitate and perform poorly. This is true in Aikido as in daily life. When a person performs with true confidence they are relaxed, focused and fully aware. _

She rolled her shoulders.  Aikido was only ever supposed to be a spiritual thing, a fitness thing.  She was never supposed to have to use it, much less against a floating, one-eyed alien probe.  But here she was.  

It bore down on her, and she didn’t fight it.  She didn’t run.  She just continued to back away.  She could see in her peripheral vision, about twenty feet to her right, a metal mesh public trash can of the kind found in public parks at that time.   _ Work with your environment, _ Sensei had often said.  This probably wasn’t what he had in mind, but nevertheless.

  
  


******

  
  


Five minutes later, she was breathing heavily, white-knuckled, perched on top of the trash can, which was overturned and clamped down on a very unhappy floating metallic probe-thing, wondering what to do next. The thing was pinging around inside the trash can, banging against the sides, clearly attempting to free itself.  It was making some seemingly frantic, electronic gurgling sounds.

Feeling ridiculous, she assured it, “Hey, I'm not gonna hurt you.  You were just getting a little too close.”

A motor growled quietly on the other side of the tree line.  A moment later, a black van pulled up.  Three people in black gear that looked distinctly military or maybe like SWAT jumped out.  The leader of the group, a stern black man with broad shoulders, sauntered up to her, looking mildly amused.  “I see you caught hold of our drone.”

Susan frowned, the trash can wobbling underneath her.  “Yeah.  He doesn't seem real happy about it either.”  She assessed him for a moment.  “So which scary government black ops organization do I have the pleasure of meeting this fine evening?”

He tilted his head for a moment, considering her.  “Well, I can't tell you that, I'm afraid.”  One of the others with him pulled out a small tablet and tapped in a few commands.  The drone settled down.  “You can get up now,” he assured her.  “It's been powered down.  We just haven't been able to get close enough to deactivate it.”

“Oh sure, of course, I get it,” Susan answered with more than a little sarcasm.  “Rogue robots.  Great.”  She shrugged herself off of the trash can and stood in front of him, bringing to bear every inch she had in her small frame.

The other two agents overturned the can and began collecting the dormant piece of escaped hardware.

She wiped her palms on her jeans.

“You handled yourself well,” he remarked after a moment.  “Aikido, right?”

She nodded.  

“You looking for work?”

She glanced at the van, its tinted windows.  At him, broad and imposing, in his black SWAT gear.  At the quiet metal orb, being loaded into the van.  “Yeah, but, you know.  I’m not exactly the military type.”

His expression was something between a smirk and a grimace.  “We’re not exactly the military.”  He pressed a card into her hand.  “Call me if you change your mind.”  He walked away, got into the van, and she stood there, watching its taillights retreat.

She turned the card over in her hand.  It said only, “H. Henshaw, Director.”  And a phone number.   _ Director of what? _ she wondered.

  
  


******

 

Susan had performed well in her exhibition at the Tekkojuku Center.  Aikido for the most part didn’t have tournaments, the true goal was what sensei called “mastery of the self”, but she was encouraged by her sensei to take part in the exhibitions.  “You practice the way one is meant to practice, and it’s important for people to see that,” her sensei had told her.

She was still in her gi, standing in the vestibule out front, drinking a bottle of water, watching the crowd streaming in and out, watching the other students who had participated milling about inside.  One tall young guy with a neck tattoo that said “LOVE” complimented her on her showing as he passed by.  She inclined her head modestly.

“Impressive, Miss Vasquez,” came a voice from behind her.  Susan closed her eyes.  There was no mistaking the voice.  How could she forget it when it was attached to what had literally been the weirdest moment of her life?

“Henshaw,” she sighed, and turned around.  There he was, this time in black jeans and a polo.  “You know, you don’t have to wear black all the time.  Have you considered that there are colors?”

He smiled, wry and knowing.  “I like black.”  He looked at her.

“Why are you here?” she demanded.  “I told you I’m not interested.”

“You really don’t want to know more about what you saw?” he parried.

Susan sighed.  She did, if she was being honest with herself.  She was fiercely curious, in fact.  But she was a musician, even if she had dropped out of Berklee after two years because she couldn’t afford it.  She studied aikido for the fitness benefits, for the spiritual practice.  Not for battling creepy government robots or whatever the hell it was that had happened to her.  “Look,” she huffed after a moment.  “Of course I’m curious.  But I really think you’ve got the wrong girl.”

“You don’t even know what we do.”

“I know you had guns,” she retorted.  “I’m not interested in that.”

Henshaw nodded.  “I understand.  But there’s a lot more to it than that.  Sign a non-disclosure and we can sit down and I can show you everything.  There’s nothing like it on this Earth, I promise you that.”

They stared each other down for a minute.

“And it pays better than tuning pianos.”

She froze.  “Okay, stalker,” she said, picking up her duffel bag.  She wasn’t even going to bother hitting the showers.  She just wanted to get out of there.  How could this weirdo think it would be okay that he knew she was tuning pianos for a living?  What else did he know?  Come to think of it, how did he know that she was even doing this exhibition.

“Think about it, Miss Vasquez,” he called after her as she walked away.

  
  
  


********

  
  


Susan didn’t get to do proper recitals anymore.  That went out the window the minute she dropped out of Berklee.  So inevitably, she ended up spending more time playing the pianos she was tuning than actually tuning them.  She was working them out, she told herself, and that was partly true, but she was really just playing them.  Her ear was beyond perfect and once she’d gotten it just right, there was no greater pleasure.  The dance studio in particular had a beautiful, mellow baby grand that reverberated in the room so nicely, it was almost like playing a proper recital in a proper hall.

It wasn’t even the audience she missed, although she did miss that.  It was the pleasure of hearing the instrument benefitting from the acoustics of a space designed to maximize its tone and clarity.  Some of her friends from Berklee had encouraged her to do a an hour or two at a cafe attached to the Berklee campus, which, while not really a hall, was a decent sounding room with a fine enough ax that she’d tuned herself many times and knew well.

So, in a small, dark room, she sat at the bench with her eyes closed, and disappeared into the glittering bars of Debussy, Tiersen, and even the atonal soundscapes of Bartok.  She closed her eyes to the room, playing only to herself, not even hearing the murmuring that suffused the space as people drank and ordered drinks and spoke softly to each other.  Even in a room full of jaded Berklee kids, Susan Vasquez was formidable.

She looked up once, and saw Maddie in the back, watching her with shining eyes.  Susan cursed under breath once, and didn’t look up again for the rest of her performance.

She finished on the thunder of “Rhapsody in Blue” and took a shy half-bow, and then departed the stage without a lot of fanfare.  She went up and ordered a black coffee from the barista.

And then behind her, that voice.  “You continue to impress me, Miss Vasquez.”

Susan jumped.  She turned around and found Henshaw standing behind her.  “Look,” she began aggressively, “you saw me at the exhibition, you know I can take you.  Why do keep stalking me?”

“I’m not stalking you, Susan, I’m trying to recruit you!”  he snapped back.

“Why?” she pressed.  “Isn’t the army full of army types that want to do whatever it is you do?”

He nodded.  “Yes.  But none of them have your unique skill set.”  He shook his head.  “Those pieces are complex.  And you understand them.  You’re not just playing them mechanically, you understand the system that produces them.”  He pointed at the piano.  “What you showed me just now, that showed me physical endurance, intellectual curiosity, deep intelligence, profound commitment.  In all honesty, I value those things far more than your combat skills.  Anyone can learn that.  What you showed here tonight can’t be taught or bought.”

Susan’s jaw dropped, then snapped shut.  

All she wanted was for someone to understand what her playing really showed about her.

Maddie came sidling up at this moment, sliding an arm around Susan’s shoulder.  “Hey Suze,” she sighed, “is this guy bothering you?”

Susan looked at Maddie.  “No, he’s fine.”  She didn’t relax into Maddie’s attempted embrace.  “What do you want?”

“That was really amazing,” she sighed.  “You were really hot.”

Susan shook her head.  Maddie still didn’t get it.  Maddie still saw her piano playing as peacock feathers, as if they were designed to attract mates, rather than an expression of her living, breathing soul.  Maddie, who had been her girlfriend, who had shared her bed and laughed and drank with her friends, didn’t get her half as well as this spooky black-ops weirdo who wouldn’t leave her the hell alone.

“Maddie, I’ve gotta go,” she sighed, and extricated herself. She started walking out.  

“Call me?” came the inevitable plea.  Maddie had regretted her decision.

Susan stopped and looked back.  “You know,” she said after a half beat of indecision.  “I don’t think so.”  She glanced at Henshaw, who was still standing by the bar with that damned look of amusement playing around his squinting eyes.

“Let’s go, Henshaw.  Show me that NDA.”


End file.
